1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to semiconductor devices, and more particularly to semiconductor devices that are flip-chip mounted on circuit substrates having passive components and/or active components.
2. Description of Related Art
Microwave systems commonly use solid state transistors as amplifiers and oscillators, which has resulted in significantly reduced system size and increased reliability. To accommodate the expanding number of microwave systems, there is an interest in increasing their operating frequency and power. Higher frequency signals can carry more information (bandwidth), allow for smaller antennas with very high gain, and provide radar with improved resolution.
Field effect transistors (FETs) and high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) are common solid state transistors that can be fabricated from semiconductor materials such as silicon (Si) or gallium arsenide (GaAs). One disadvantage of Si is that it has low electron mobility (approximately 1450 cm2/V-s), which produces a high source resistance. This resistance seriously degrades the high performance gain otherwise possible from Si based FETs. [CRC Press, The Electrical Engineering Handbook, Second Edition, Dorf, p. 994, (1997)]
GaAs is also a common material for use in HEMTs and has become the standard for signal amplification in civil and military radar, handset cellular, and satellite communications. GaAs HEMTs have a higher electron mobility (approximately 6000 cm2/V-s) and a lower source resistance than Si, which allows GaAs based devices to function at higher frequencies. However, GaAs has a relatively small bandgap (1.42 eV at room temperature) and relatively small breakdown voltage, which prevents GaAs based HEMTs from providing high power.
Improvements in the manufacturing of Group-III nitride based semiconductor materials such as gallium nitride (GaN) and aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN) has focused interest on the development of AlGaN/GaN based devices such as HEMTs. These devices can generate large amounts of power because of their unique combination of material characteristics including high breakdown fields, wide bandgaps (3.36 eV for GaN at room temperature), large conduction band offset, and high saturated electron drift velocity. The same size AlGaN/GaN amplifier can produce around ten times the power of a GaAs amplifier operating at the same frequency.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,192,987 to Khan et al. discloses AlGaN/GaN based HEMTs grown on a buffer and a substrate, and a method for producing a HEMT. Other HEMTs have been described by Gaska et al., “High-Temperature Performance of AlGaN/GaN HFET's on SiC Substrates,” IEEE Electron Device Letters, Vol. 18, No 10, October 1997, Page 492; and Wu et al. “High Al-content AlGaN/GaN HEMTs With Very High Performance”, IEDM-1999 Digest pp. 925-927, Washington D.C., December 1999. Some of these devices have shown a gain-bandwidth product (fT) as high as 100 gigahertz (Lu et al. “AlGaN/GaN HEMTs on SiC With Over 100 GHz ft and Low Microwave Noise”, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, Vol. 48, No. 3, March 2001, pp. 581-585) and high power densities up to 10 W/mm at X-band (Wu et al., “Bias-dependent Performance of High-Power AlGaN/GaN HEMTs”, IEDM-2001, Washington D.C., Dec. 2-6, 2001)
Group-III nitride based semiconductor devices are often fabricated either on sapphire or SiC substrates. One disadvantage of sapphire substrates is that they have poor thermal conductivity and the total power output of devices formed on sapphire substrates can be limited by the substrate's thermal dissipation. Sapphire substrates are also difficult to etch. SiC substrates have higher thermal conductivity (3.5-5 w/cmk) but have the disadvantages of being relatively expensive and not available in large wafer diameters of 4-inch and greater. Typical semi-insulating SiC wafers are three inches in diameter and if the active layers of a transistor are formed on the wafer along with the passive components, interconnections, and/or pre-stage amplifiers, the yield in number of devices per wafer is relatively low. This reduced yield adds to the cost of fabricating Group III transistors on SiC substrates.
GaAs and Si semi-insulating wafers are available in larger diameters at a relatively low cost compared to the smaller diameter SiC wafers. GaAs and Si wafers are easier to etch and have low electrical conductivity. Another advantage of these wafers is that fabrication of semiconductor devices and other processing can be conducted at a commercial foundry, which can reduce cost. One disadvantage of these wafers is that they cannot be easily used as a substrate for Group-III nitride based devices because the lattice mismatch between the materials leads to poor quality semiconductor devices. Another disadvantage of these wafers is that they have low thermal conductivity.
In some instances GaAs semiconductor devices may not have the necessary operating characteristics. For example, a GaAs based multistage amplifier may not be able to provide the required output power levels. In such cases it may be desirable to fabricate a GaN based multistage amplifier. However, such an implementation has some disadvantages. First, the area required for a multi-stage MMIC with interstage networks and all the passive circuit elements is large. Expensive real estate on the GaN transistor substrate would be used up in hosting passive elements. Second, device and circuit models of GaN transistors are less established than their GaAs counterparts, thus making it difficult to accurately design and yield multistage GaN amplifiers that provide higher gain and power outputs.